| Unless some miracle emerges from the current stalemate between Gov. Jon Corzine and the state legislature, public colleges and universities in the Garden state are not only facing a loss of $169 million in direct funding, they may not get another $121.8 million that would normally be used to reimburse them for having to pay for increased salaries and benefits on state negotiated union contracts. The planned cuts will be disastrous for the whole state, not just the students and employees of the higher education system.
The colleges and universities have announced a number of drastic measures that they will take if the cuts go through, including increasing class sizes, cutting student aid, cutting programs (and in some cases, faculty lines), freezing hiring, deferring maintenance, and hiking tuition. At TCNJ, we’ve been told to expect to spend the first week of January, 2007 without a paycheck. Op-ed writers have been quick to characterize the proposed cuts as counter-productive and short-sighted. It’s also been widely noted that New Jersey is contemplating these cuts at a time when states such as Pennsylvania are increasing their investment in higher education.
The state’s underinvestment in higher education has increased the burdens on college students and their families. A white paper posted to the website of the Hall Institute found that inconsistent state funding practices over the last 15 years have caused tuition prices at state colleges to rise faster than the rate of inflation. According to the paper, entitled Making Public Higher Education Affordable in New Jersey, “Even taking account of state and federal financial aid, public higher education has become unaffordable for low and lower middle income families, and threatens soon to become unaffordable for the middle class. Since higher education is a powerful generator of opportunity and increased wages, the State faces a tremendous loss due to its failing commitment to higher education.” |
Of course, the rising cost of delivering a college education is part of the problem. Another Hall Institute expert, Michael Riccards, summarizes recommendations from a Lumina Foundation study of rising college costs. Some of the suggestions in Riccards’ essay, “Controlling College Costs – A National Perspective,” make sense in some instance. For example, dual enrollment programs with secondary schools allow strong high school students have a chance to knock out complete college general education requirements through their AP coursework. Others suggestions suggest that Riccard is out of touch with the demands of the modern professoriate at a state college, especially in New Jersey. For example, Riccard says:Faculty productivity would be increased beyond the 6 to 9 instruction hours a week that many teach, or colleges could outsource the introductory courses in a department. The legendary president of Columbia University, Nicholas Murray Butler, began his career as an assistant professor who taught 18 hours a week and at the same time produced 105 separate pieces of research and opinion. As illustrious as the career of Dr. Butler was, I am all but certain that he did not have to concern himself with the range of matters that confront me and my colleagues.
For the record, state college faculty are contracted for 12 instruction hours for the week. (If, you teach writing, as I do, you may be hard pressed to find a class that is capped at 15 students, as recommended by the National Council of Teachers of English.) Add a minimum of three hours for office hours. If you are in a program such as the two in which I teach, add 35-50 academic advisees whom you not only assist at registration, but whom you supervise in internships. In my major, each student is required to complete an internship in order to graduate.
Of course, some of these internships are available because you’ve spent a fair amount of energy networking with colleagues, employers and alumni to make them possible. Add the dozens of students for whom you are called upon to write recommendation letters. Of course, you’ve got to have a student organization or two to advise. Fold in the weekend admissions events that you are asked to attend to help recruit new students. Don’t forget the course proposals that now have to be written with specified learning outcomes, the plans you have to generate to assure that the outcomes have been achieved and the assessment documents you have to compile that provide a comparable analysis of the entire program. This of course, only applies to programs that do not require accreditation – accrediting documents have to be much more detailed. Then there are the grant proposals you have to research and write – not only to support your research, but often to fund the equipment that’s needed to run your programs. That leaves you plenty of time for your committee work.
Very little of this counts toward tenure and promotion of course, unless you are at a community college, where your teaching load will likely be heavier. Your tenure and promotion committee will need you to prove that you are publishing in top-tier journals. To do this, you have to stay current in your field – that’s always the case. And if your field is technology-intensive, you may need new equipment every two-three years, not only for yourself, but for the students who have to be acquainted with the best practices in the field they hope to enter.
None of this is a complaint – when it comes to job satisfaction, I’m generally happy that I left a better-paying job 16 years ago to become an academic. And I do appreciate the pressures that confront the governor and legislature.
But here’s one thing I know: you don’t survive eating your seed corn. Education is still the primary engine of economic opportunity in this society, not just for individuals, but for industry and communities as well. This is the time for strategic public-private partnerships in education, not continued under-investment. Those partnerships should go beyond the much needed scholarship funding, internship programs and research support programs that currently exist.
For example, Riccard mentioned the need to strengthen K-12 education in order to reduce the amount of money that colleges and universities spend remediating students. I know of at least two state colleges – TCNJ and Kean University – with programs that have achieved documented success in helping urban math and science teachers improve their skills. Those programs should receive more funding, not less.
In addition, many of the state colleges have strong undergraduate research programs in several fields vital to the state’s economic competitiveness. More needs to be done to identify ways to foster research collaborations across institutions and with private industry.
Finally, I first came to work for TCNJ as a corporate loaned executive. Although I chose to stay in academia, most loaned executives return to their companies after a semester or year of teaching. The schools benefit financially, and students benefit from having someone in the classroom who is a master practitioner of the discipline in question. The donor company benefits by having employees who have a better understanding of what really goes on in the academy. Loaned executives might be one economical way of easing the over-reliance on adjunct faculty – a worrisome trend that is sure to increase as a result of the budget crisis.
The problems facing the state and its higher education system are serious and long-term, but they can be solved if the state and the legislature are willing to look at its institutions of higher learning as assets to be cultivated, not to be plundered. |
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